Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-16-Speech-2-201"
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"en.20060516.35.2-201"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank the Commissioner for his presentation and congratulate him on his work on this very difficult topic, one on which I have had many discussions with him in the recent past.
I would firstly like to make my key point and then we can discuss the wider issue. With regard to Romania and the situation of children in Romanian institutions, orphanages and foster homes, more work needs to be done; more action needs to be taken to treat those children as individual human beings with human rights. If sometimes that means allowing for international adoptions, then that should be the case. I know of many parents in Ireland who are willing to and wish to adopt children from Romania, especially children with mental and physical disabilities, and want to bring them to loving and caring homes in Ireland, but because of the difficulties they run into major problems. So I would ask the Romanian authorities to look at that again.
However, we are back to where we are because of the statement from the Commission today and also because of the underhand moves taking place in certain capitals around Europe to try to prevent or slow down the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. Let us not forget that this is not just about those two countries living up to commitments that they made to us under the Copenhagen criteria and under their accession agreements. It is also up to us to live up to our commitments.
We held out the hope and the desire and the wish that those countries could become part of the European Union. The first time we said to them: no, you are not ready, you cannot come in with the ten other countries on 1 May 2004; you have more work to do. They have progressed greatly in the recent past in changing laws, in amending systems that are decades old, to try and bring about a more realistic approach. It is now up to us to be generous in our praise of those countries, to give them genuine encouragement and not lectures on how their systems should operate, to give them our experience with the open method of coordination, under which you look at practices in other countries and take the best of them and try to achieve the best possible result.
We all know what the basics are. The basics are the rule of law, the rule of democracy, the separation of powers, the rights of the individual and human rights and fundamental freedoms. Everything else can be sorted out by simple legislation. At one stage people said that politics is not that important. Politics is important because it affects people’s lives. We in this Chamber are often criticised for not being radical enough in our opinions and our viewpoints.
What we need to do today is not just to tell the Governments of Bulgaria and Romania to continue with the work they are doing and achieve the goal they are trying to achieve; not only should we speak to the governments of our own countries and say they must be clear and even-handed and give a real response to those countries; we must speak directly to the citizens and the people of Bulgaria and Romania and say to them that within the European Union they have a home, they have a right, they have an entitlement, and we will defend those rights and those entitlements for them."@en1
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